If I could turn back time.
These are not just the lyrics from a Cher song. They’re a common lament.
We all have things we wish we’d done different. Or things that we wish would have gone differently.
And while it’s too late for a re-do, it’s never too late for us to fantasize about what could have been. To envision wiping out what occurred and writing a new script.
We’ve done this for centuries, with a catch. All those machinations, tweaks, changes — they were confined to the bounds of our imaginations. For there was no Magic Eraser we could turn to in real life.
But now, things are changing.
A movement has been growing in recent years.
Like a wave, it started out innocuously, shielded by the vastness of the water around it. But it relentlessly rose from its surroundings, to the point where it couldn’t be ignored any longer. And then it crashed over us with a vicious fury.
This wave is called Cancel Culture. And it first crested during the Me Too movement, when women took a stand against acts of sexual misconduct by powerful men.
Many of the perpetrators were prominent figures — entertainers, producers and business moguls. The public knew their names, but not their alleged actions. Those atrocities were shrouded behind a wall of silence.
When the dam broke, and all those secrets saw the light of day, people were outraged. While some of these men ended up facing charges in court, all of them faced harsh judgment in the court of public opinion.
Casting out these men from their jobs seemed too limiting. The public sought to expel them from good graces of culture as well.
And so, everything these fallen figures had ever touched turned to ash. Many stopped citing or sharing their work. Instead of treating these men like cornerstones of modern history, people canceled them from the text entirely.
It was a drastic move, to be sure. But for many, it was a cathartic one as well.
The rush of water had crested and crashed, washing clean the sins of recent history.
And yet, this was no rogue wave. It was the start of a tidal surge.
Indeed, Cancel Culture has continued to thrive in the wake of the Me Too movement. And in the process, it’s consumed a far wider swath of transgressions.
But now, it might be at the point of no return.
The moment we’re facing is dire.
A global pandemic has raged for months, and it shows few signs of abating. Around the world, millions have been infected and hundreds of thousands of people have died. People have been asked to avoid each other in the name of public health. And all of this has led to an economic recession and the upending of many societal traditions.
But in the midst of this crisis, another one has come to the forefront. A series of racially charged incidents in the United States have led to widespread outrage. Coast to coast, people have left their isolation bubbles to protest this injustice. And difficult discussions regarding race relations have come to the fore.
It is within this perfect storm — this mix of helplessness and rage — that Cancel Culture has surged. With so little recourse to fix the present crisis, we’ve focused our attention on the past. On just how much of it we can omit.
Now, the waves of change aren’t mere whitecaps. They’re a tsunami.
This tsunami has led to some overdue changes. Statues of confederate leaders have been removed. The offensive name of Washington’s National Football League team has been changed. And mentions of one racist United States President from a century ago have been scrubbed from Princeton University.
These changes had been debated for years, so they were a long time coming. If we want to live in a world of equality and racial justice, we should not immortalize those who led armies against such concepts. We should not promote those who spoke forcefully against it. And we should not allow anyone to profit off of it by selling team t-shirts featuring racial slurs.
Perhaps, if the changes had ended here, we’d be alright.
But a tsunami does not attack with precision. It obliterates everything in sight.
And so, we now see some people demanding that more of American history be scrubbed. That everything from the era of inequities be stricken from the record.
Those fighting for this cause might mention that George Washington owned slaves. They might exclaim that American Indians never called themselves that name. Or point out that the original Texas Rangers weren’t exactly kind to Mexicans or Blacks.
They might claim that the song Dixie was once used in minstrel shows — even though the term itself was the French translation for a 10-dollar note. They might mention that Sam Houston lived in the Antebellum South — even though aimed to keep Texas out of the Confederacy.
Never mind the context behind any of these examples. The context does not matter. At least that’s what these reformers would have us believe.
After all, they would argue that well has been poisoned. That these people and entities were the beneficiaries of a broken system.
And now, in more enlightened times, our only recourse for reckoning with this system is take out the Magic Eraser and wipe it all away. The statues. The names. The mentions. All of it.
This might seem like a compelling case to make. But it’s a fatally flawed one.
Many years ago, I stood on a steep hillside in Germany.
It was a warm summer day, but I had chills up and down my spine.
For the hill I was standing on was within the gates of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Decades earlier, more than 50,000 people had lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis there.
The Holocaust happened well before my time, and well before the times of many others now walking this earth. And yet, it still resonates with us in the most horrifying of ways.
It does so not because of history textbooks, documentaries or movies. Those can always be canceled away from our collective consciousness.
No, the Holocaust resonates because of sites like Buchenwald. Sites of horror that have been preserved despite our overwhelming urge to bury them from memory.
The Germans stripped the names of the Nazis from symbols of their culture. You won’t find streets named after Gestapo officers or key figures in the Reichstag.
But the Germans took great care not to wipe their history books entirely.
Cities pay homage to Gutenburg, Goethe, Schiller and other key figures who predated the Nazis. And the concentration camps remain scarring reminders of the darkest era of European history. An era that we cannot afford to let happen again.
It is this point that Cancel Culture seems to miss.
If we go overboard with the Magic Eraser, we lose track of our mistakes. We set the stage for history to repeat itself in the most brutal of ways.
Let’s avoid this trap.
Let’s treat history with a scalpel, not a machete. Let’s proceed deliberately, not emotionally. And let’s heed the words of Hippocrates — the ones imploring us to do no harm.
This will allow us to learn from bygone eras without exalting them. And it will provide us a roadmap to building a better future.
So, let’s put the Magic Eraser away. In an age where we have all the tools, that’s not one we need.